


Saut dans le vide

by theseviolentdelices



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Friends to Lovers to Enemies, M/M, and let's face it they're both so tired of this bitch of a life, and there's only one way it can end really but not before they say their final truths, frank has had enough and so has billy but he's too much of a narcissist to admit it, in which Billy captures Frank after the carousel scene, in which frank should've left kandahar when billy begged him to, in which the last line of this fic is the closest to 'i love you' they will ever get, they're both all sorts of messed up, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 10:51:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15604683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseviolentdelices/pseuds/theseviolentdelices
Summary: Jigsaw gets his hands on the Punisher again, but not in the way he's always wanted.-“You wanted me, Billy. Well, you got me,” Frank sighs, “now what, huh? What else could you possibly take away from me?”Billy gets to his feet and scowls. He's always towered over Frank. Long and lanky, quick and agile. A chatterbox who's too clever for his own good. He's always been everything that Frank isn't. That's what drew them together.That's what tore them apart.





	Saut dans le vide

**Author's Note:**

> A Frankenbilly blurb that I originally posted on my blog (smiley-celine.tumblr.com), but I've made some edits to it since then.
> 
> Title comes from the song Nara by alt-j.
> 
> Thanks for reading in advance, would love to know what you think!

“Always seein’ red, Frankie,” Bill clucks, “it’s bad for the constitution.”

Frank’s ears are buzzing. Bill’s right. He’s shaking with the effort to break the zip tie around his wrists. His eyelids are stained with crusted-over blood.

“Alright, cut the shit.”

His voice is sterner now.

“I know you’re awake.”

Frank chuckles, opening his sticky eyes. His teeth are washed with scarlet.

“Bravo, Bill,” Frank spits on his shoes. No more leather wing-tips, just combat boots, like old times. “You’ve got me right where you want me. Better not fuck it up this time.”

Billy’s kneeling in front of Frank. Eye-level. There’s a gun resting gingerly on his thigh.

“Come on, what are you waiting for?” Frank is getting angrier, but his voice doesn’t obscure his weariness, “pull the goddamn trigger. Spare me the dramatic monologue. I think we’re both past that.”

Bill is still staring at him. A face full of scars, but those goddamn black eyes are still the same. Frank should have gauged them out when he had the chance. He can’t take the silence, so he continues.

“Why’d you bring me here, huh?” Frank cocks his head, “you gonna shoot me or just shoot the shit until I bash my own head in?”

“Dying’s easy, Frankie,” Bill says finally, his long trigger finger tapping the steel barrel of the gun, “isn’t that what you told me?”

Frank snorts, shaking his head. 

He is tired. He is worn like he’s never been before. Frank’s been to war, slept in ditches, stayed up days on end with nothing to do but listen to the firing of machine guns and grenades going off. He’s been through hell, but he’s never been as tired as he is now. It’s a dull ache that goes all the way to his bones, to his soul. There’s almost no fight left in him. The only spark is that of anger, and even _that_ is weaning, replaced by defeat, replaced by a desire for everything to simply _end._

“You wanted me, Billy. Well, you got me,” Frank sighs, “now what, huh? What else could you possibly take away from me?”

Billy gets to his feet and scowls. He's always towered over Frank. Long and lanky, quick and agile. A chatterbox who's too clever for his own good. He's always been everything that Frank isn't. That's what drew them together.

That's what tore them apart.

“I never took anythin’ away from you.”

Frank scoffs.

“You really believe that shit?” Frank’s nostrils flare, “DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT JUST BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T PULL THE TRIGGER, THAT MEANS YOU HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT?!”

The metal chair Frank is tied to rocks with the furious quakes of his body.

“YOU WERE MY BROTHER! YOU WERE MY BROTHER AND I WOULD HAVE DIED FOR YOU, BILL, BUT YOU COULDN’T EVEN BRING YOURSELF TO WARN ME–”

“I told you before that’s not how I wanted it to go down–”

“DON’T YOU DARE INSULT THEIR MEMORIES BY PRETENDING YOU EVER GAVE A SHIT! DON’T YOU FUCKING _DARE_ STAND THERE AND LIE TO MY FACE!” 

Frank is huffing and puffing, the veins in his neck protruding, bursting out of their fleshy confinement. He wants the truth. Just once, just one last time, he wants to hear the truth from this man, this scum, his brother.

“Just admit it, Billy. Just admit that everything went down _EXACTLY_ how you wanted it. You’re not sorry my family died. You’re sorry you got caught. You’re sorry I survived long enough to find out you were a son of a bitch and fuck up that pretty face of yours, Bill, JUST ADMIT IT!”

Billy clenches and unclenches his fist.

“I’m not sorry you survived, Frankie.”

That sweet-as-honey New York drawl blindsides Frank worse than a pistol-whipping. That low timbre, and the squinted corners of Bill’s cesspool eyes. You’d think the two of them were whispering sweet-nothings in each other’s ears at a love motel, not speaking their last, defeated words in the bone-aching dampness of an abandoned warehouse beside the Hudson. The Punisher–beat to a pulp and tied to a chair with the not-so-pretty-anymore bane of his existence standing over him like some reaper come to collect his measly dues.

What's there left to collect from Frank Castle?

What's there left to reap for Billy Russo?

Their eyes meet, and Frank has to look away. He can’t stand it. Bill has always been so _steady_ , so unwavering. It’s always taken a lot and then some to get his blood up, even in a war zone.

His gaze is so sincere it makes Frank’s skin crawl. Either Billy lies as well as he breathes or he means it, which is even worse, which is even more crooked.

“You’re a fucked up son of a bitch.”

Bill smirks. Even with the scars, even without his hair, the smirk is the same. That aloof indifference, that bitter amusement.

Billy the Beaut wanted to play an ugly man’s game, and Frankie’d tried to make him come out of it ugly, but it hadn’t worked.

The pretty oozes through the cracks in Bill’s face. Like an infection, it refuses to go away. It fights to stay alive just like Bill’s always fought to stay alive. At all costs.

Frank had tried to make Billy into himself, tried to beat him into a new mold, into  _Jigsaw_ , into a rough man, a  _tough guy_ , like him. If Billy was just another thug, just another crooked-nosed, scarred scumbag, it would've been simpler. Opposites attract, and damn it if Frank hadn't tried his darnedest, hadn't given his all into trying to make Bill  _like_ himself.  But Bill Russo had character enough without the scars, and now that they're there, marring his pretty boy features, Frank thinks the only thing he created on that carousel was another postmodern masterpiece. The shit high-brow art connoisseurs pay millions to see, to admire.

A masterpiece that is magnificent in its deformity. Divine in its irony. The kind of ugly you could still stare at for hours, trying to decide whether its form followed its function or the other way 'round. 

Frank can see it in his ink-black eyelashes, in the sharp lines of his jaw, his full lips. Not pretty like a magazine model anymore, but pretty all the same.

“Takes one to know one.”

Billy sighs and pulls up a chair, places it in front of Frank and sits down. The gun is in his hand now.

“None of this would’ve happened if you’d just agreed to leave with me, ya know.”

“Shut the fuck up, Bill.”

“I asked you that night, I–”

“NO, I’M TIRED OF YOUR BULLSHIT! SHOOT ME, ALRIGHT? JUST FUCKING–” Frank is on the verge of tears, “–just fucking shoot me, please, just–end it. For both of us. For both of us, Bill, this has,” he chokes and squints his eyes shut. Frank is exhausted. So exhausted that all he has left to want is death. He wants this Bill, this scum, _his_ Bill, to give him the mercy he’d begrudged him on that carousel, “this’s been goin’ on too goddamn long.”

The gun is swaying to the rhythm of Billy’s hand, the same way Bill used to bounce his palm into his knee when their cots were still feet away from each other. Back when they used to fall asleep to the sound of each other’s breathing. Up down up down. Up. Down.

Bill never could sit still. Always skittish, like a cat. Ready to pounce or draw back at a moment’s notice.

Up and down. Up down. Up. and down.

“You’re right,” Bill admits, “this should’ve ended in Kandahar. Same day you punched Rawlins’ eye out.”

“You protected him.”

“I was protecting you.”

It’s the same thing he said that day, and it makes Frank’s blood boil.

“Bullshit!”

“No, Frankie. I wasn’t working for him then. Not yet,” he eyes his restrained companion, “I only threw in with him after that night.”

“Why, because you finally got tired of the shit and blood? Wanted change up your camo for a fancy suit?”

“BECAUSE YOU WOULDN’T LEAVE, FRANK!” Bill finally loses his cool, “I practically got on my knees in front of you, I _begged_ you to get out with me. You know how many people I've _begged_ in my life?"

Billy pauses. His chest is heaving, and Frank knows they're both thinking of the same thing.

_Kill me._

_Do it._

**_Please._ **

Frank closes his eyes, and he can still feel Bill's blood-slick hand clutching his own as he said those words. Long, delicate fingers slipping up to Frank's knife-wielding palm with a tenderness that had no place on that retribution-stained carousel. 

Somewhere deep down, Frank acknowledges that it was the  _only_ place for it. Blackbird and Raven never had anythin' but blood between them, even at the start. Stolen touches and glances as their lives revolved in a big, infinite machine of war.

"I gave you your goddamn chance, and guess what?” Billy sneers, “You passed it up. You left me out in the cold–”

“Oh yeah, yeah. The poor lil’ orphan boy got his feelings hurt, huh? You wanted me to hold your hand all the way back to Force? Pack you a fucking lunch while I was at it?”

“I WANTED YOU TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU WERE CIRCLING THE DRAIN LONG BEFORE RAWLINS EVER CAME INTO OUR LIVES! IT WAS GETTIN’ HARDER AND HARDER FOR YOU TO COME BACK HOME, EVEN MARIA SAW IT–”

“Don’t you say her name, don’t you–”

“I WANTED YOU TO CARE MORE ABOUT ME THAN ABOUT THAT GODDAMN WAR, ALRIGHT?!”

Frank scrunches his nose, his eyes dart from side to side. Even Billy’s eyes widen, as if he's unable to believe the words that just left his mouth. But they were true words, and that's what Frank wanted, right? One last truth before the end.

They’re silent a long time.

“That’s…” Frank lets out something between a growl and groan, like he’s been kicked in the gut, “that’s why you let my wife and kids die, Bill?” Frank’s eyes squint shut, and his voice takes on a pitying, mocking edge, because that’s the only way he manages to get the words out. The only way Frank can shield himself from the the fact that he’s always known, _of course_  he’d known, is to regress into his no-homo-middle-school-playground self, pretending like four tours of his cock balls-deep in his blood brother’s asshole was just a need that had to be filled, just a surface-level matter of fact. The innocent slip-up of a misplaced, misdirected libido, “‘cause–’cause you wanted me to be your lil’ girlfriend?”

Bill’s scowl is one that should be in actor’s manuals, Frank thinks. It’s perfect. Pointed. Frank’s witnessed the strongest of men crumble underneath the weight of that disapproving downward quirk of Billy’s chapstick-soft lips, seen COs look down at themselves to check if they’d accidentally drooled on their shirt or done something else stupid at the sight of it.

The click of the gun’s hammer being pulled back is like a soothing lullaby to Frank’s buzzing ears.

_Finally_ is the first thing he thinks.

The second is–

_At least it’ll be Bill._

Cool steel between his brows, but it stings like Bill’s manicured nails digging into Frank’s bicep the first time Frank takes him out behind their barracks and fucks him ‘till he can’t walk.

Somewhere in the back of Frank’s concussed mind, he hears a devil in a red suit, asking a question that’s never bothered Frank until this very moment.

_What about you, Frank? What happens the day someone decides **you** deserve it?_

“I’ll tell you what, Bill,” Frank’s strangled voice whispers, pillow-soft like the bed they never got to sleep on, not together, “you’d better not miss.”

They smile, and it’s not bitter. They smile, and they’re back in the dry thick of the sweltering desert, shooting the shit and shooting other people instead of each other.

Bill’s long pianist finger is gentle on the trigger, stroking it like it’s the swell of a bottom lip he never got to touch, not in _that_ way.

“You’ve always been a dumb son of a bitch, Frankie.”


End file.
